Shakespeare in the city

Vermont Shakespeare Company brings 'The Tempest' to Burlington

Aug. 16, 2012

Jena Necrason portrays Ariel, the spirit who helps Prospero, in the Vermont Shakespeare Company's production of 'The Tempest' at Knight Point State Park in North Hero. The play comes to Burlington's Oakledge Park this weekend. / Jan Nagle/Courtesy Photo

With no light board or sound board to create effects, the production of “The Tempest” at Knight Point State Park last weekend had to rely on nature to help set the mood — fitting, considering that every scene of William Shakespeare’s final play takes place outdoors.

At Sunday evening’s performance by the Vermont Shakespeare Company, actors’ voices were occasionally augmented by the honking of geese or the barking of a distant dog. During Prospero’s dramatic speech near the end of the play, the moments of silence between his words were filled by the soft hum of crickets as the day’s light faded into night.

For its first four years , the Vermont Shakespeare Company has produced its plays in the splendid isolation of the Champlain Islands. For the second half of its fifth season though, the troupe is moving to the big city — at least in the micro-world of Vermont — when it stages four productions this weekend at Oakledge Park in Burlington, where the sounds of nature might compete with the buzz of the urban landscape.

The expansion reflects a couple of realities for the small but ambitious Shakespeare company. Artistic Director Jena Necrason and her husband, Executive Director John Nagle, dream of turning the tiny Vermont Shakespeare Company into a nationally known Shakespeare festival. They also know that might be hard to do in similarly tiny Grand Isle County, a laid-back summer-tourist destination that has only about 7,000 year-round residents. Burlington, with about 40,000 residents in the arts-intensive city limits and another 100,000 or so within easy driving distance, is a hard lure to resist.

“The second location gives us a lot of positives,” Nagle said Friday evening, right after a heavy rain storm washed out one of the company’s four planned weekend performances. “We are very aware of and have seen the arts in Burlington, and we like that.”

The Vermont Shakespeare Company held its first production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” at Knight Point in 2005 as a benefit for the Champlain Islands’ Parent Child Center. “It just seemed like a good fit,” Nagle said.

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And it has been a good fit, according to Nagle, through “Twelfth Night” in 2006, “The Comedy of Errors” in 2008 and “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2010. There are limitations, though, as Nagle pointed out, one being that the population center in Burlington offers so much activity that it’s hard to attract city residents north to the relatively remote Champlain Islands. Still, each production at Knight Point State Park typically draws 100 or more patrons who bring picnics and sip on East Shore Vineyard wine sold on site.

“It’s a hard sell. It works for us because it’s special, it’s an event,” said Nagle, the director of “The Tempest.” “To generate consistent audiences, it can’t be just vacationers.”

In “The Tempest,” the magical spirit named Ariel (portrayed in the Vermont Shakespeare production by Necrason) speaks of “this most desolate isle” in reference to the place where the play’s characters are stranded, though it could almost apply to remote North Hero, were the island not more serene than desolate. A patron at Sunday evening’s performance, Ellen Thompson of South Hero, noted that the 20-minute drive from Burlington to the islands seems longer than the 20-minute drive from the islands to Burlington.

She and her husband, Jim Holzschuh, value having the Vermont Shakespeare Company in Grand Isle County. They run Grand Isle Art Works, a gallery and café, and Holzschuh said it’s important to support other enterprises in their small county.

“Plus, I like Shakespeare,” Thompson added.

The staging at Knight Point State Park took place beneath a canopy of trees. The play features 13 actors, mostly from New York City, but Mark Roberts is among a handful of Vermonters in the cast of “The Tempest.” He plays Sebastian, one of the conspirators who drove Prospero and his daughter out of Milan to the “most desolate isle” upon which the play is set.

Roberts said he loves being able to act in the elements in his home state, with rows of trees and craggy sumac bushes serving as the backdrop. “When the weather’s right, it really adds to the magic,” he said Sunday night, after a weekend where the Friday and Saturday night performances were rained out (a Sunday matinee was added to replace one of those shows).

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The outdoor setting and resulting limitations of the set means the actors have to step up a bit. “The Tempest” has actors vibrating metal sheets to create the sound of thunder and occasionally playing musical instruments to add to the feel of the play that’s built around fantastical imagery.

“You rely a lot more on the actors to create the mood” with an outdoor performance, according to Roberts, who performs frequently with Lost Nation Theater in Montpelier. “It adds to the challenge and it makes you feel as an actor that you have more responsibility in creating the illusion.”

Nagle and Necrason live outside New York City, where Necrason teaches in the drama department at New York University. They have family in Vermont and dream of moving to the state one day, but in the meantime plan to increase their presence in Vermont by increasing the presence of the Vermont Shakespeare Company. North Hero has given the company a good start, Nagle said, and now he and Necrason hope the second home in Burlington will move them toward plans for several repertory-styled productions at one time in various locations throughout the state.

“I feel like we’re on a nice track,” Nagle said. “It’s baby steps each year, but the support seems to be following us.”